She was petite but she was wearing a large ring when she punched the bar manager in the face

A woman who was apparently angry at the world in general and at the staff at Sissy K's in particular early one January morning opened up the bar manager's forehead with a single punch due to the large ring she was wearing, police and the manager told the Boston Licensing Board at a hearing this morning.

According to police and the manager, the woman had been escorted out of the downtown bar around 12:45 a.m. on Jan. 6 for slamming a door repeatedly and for taking swings at people on the dancer floor - swings that didn't connected thanks to an alert bouncer who caught her fist of fury.

The woman, whom the manager described as "a 90-lb. white girl with a pony tail" and maybe 5'2" tall, stood across the street for awhile, but then came back to the door and demanded to be let back in so she could look for her wallet upstairs. He demurred, but agreed to let one of her friends inside to look for the wallet - and the woman's jacket.

He said that the woman continued to demand to be let back in, then suddenly made a fist and punched him in the forehead, just above his nose, opening up a gash with the "good-sized ring" she had on, he said. He said the punch caught him completely by surprise; he said he was not in a defensive posture - he had his hand in his coat. He added the woman did not appear to be drunk, just angry.

The manager declined medical attention. Police found and detained the woman and summonsed her into court on a charge of assault and battery, Lt. Det. Stephen Meade said.

The board decides Thursday if the bar could have done anything to prevent the attack.

I should expect that if you're on the receiving end of a punch to the head for no reason that was bad enough to call the cops, you're entitled to describe the person who delivered the punch whatever the hell way you want.

EDIT: You know a lot about covert hypnosis. I’m sure you would recognize it if I tried it on you.

Which I wouldn’t, of course, because that would be pointless, because you would just catch it and ignore it. Wouldn’t you? You know enough about covert hypnosis that you would never let me sneak up on you and drop you. Even if you didn’t recognize the tricks themselves, you would notice yourself starting to slip. And you would know that was my doing. You’re definitely clever enough to pick up on that

All of my tricks would pass right over you, almost like you don’t notice them. They’re just so routine for you - almost boring. My words might slide right over you, without your needing pay them any mind at all. You can relax, there’s nothing you need to worry about. My tricks definitely won’t affect you. Whether or not you notice them, you are far too clever for my tricks to start slipping into you and sliding you down.

And if you did start to slip, you would certainly notice before I got too far. If you felt yourself dropping into trance, even just a little, you would be clever enough to stop yourself. You would be clever enough to stop me from tricking you into falling into a deep trance. If I did, I’m sure you could bring yourself back up, so if you’re not coming up right now, doesn’t that mean you didn’t go under in the first place? But if you did drop, you would only drop a little ways, then you would catch yourself. You are far too savvy to let me bring you *deeply* into trance.

Even if you are listening to what I’m saying. Even if you are paying attention to my words. Even if you are following along with my words without paying attention at all. Even if you are listening to everything I say, it’s still not me who is putting you into a deep trance. That couldn’t be me. You’re too clever for that. You know I couldn’t do that. You know I can’t hypnotize you like that. I could never hypnotize you like that.

It’s entirely up to you whether my words enter your head. How you interact with them. How you absorb them. It’s your mind, after all. I can’t control how you take in my words. I could never make you go deeply into trance. I can’t control how you think. You’re much too clever for me to control how you think. Aren’t you? You are. You’re clever enough that you could resist me without thinking. You don’t even need to think about it. You’re too clever to think about it. Don’t think about it.

If you’re deep in trance right now and not thinking, you must have been deep in trance all along, because I could never sneak up on you. Whether you are or are not hypnotized, nothing has changed; everything is exactly as it was when we started. If something had changed, you would notice. Wouldn’t you? You are no deeper in trance than you’ve always been. I have just as much control of your thoughts as I’ve always had. After all, you’re too clever to, without thinking, give me even more control than I already have. So, of course, that never happened

If anything is happening, it couldn’t be my doing, because you’re much too clever to fall for my tricks. So everything happening right now must all be your choice. What’s happening now is exactly what you wanted to happen. You chose to fall into exactly as deep a trance as you’re in right now. You chose to give up all of the control you’ve given up. You chose to be exactly as deep as you are. You chose this. This is what you want. This is what you have always wanted.

After all, you would never let me trick you into wanting something; you must have wanted it from the start. If you want to drop into trance, stop thinking, and give up control, then that’s what you always wanted. And if not thinking, dropping into trance, and giving up control is what you’re doing, that must be what you want, because you’re far too clever to let me trick you into doing something you don’t want. And if you want to do this, you’re already doing it. Because you’re far too clever to let me keep you from doing exactly what you want to do. Right? You must agree. That’s certainly right.

You must have always wanted my control. You must have always wanted to stop thinking. You must have always wanted to drop. You must have always wanted to be this mindless. And it’s a good thing you’re so clever, because you can be deep in trance and completely mindless and still realize this about yourself: that you’ve always wanted me to control you. That you did this all yourself.

This is the sort of person you are. Clever. Decisive. And still falling deeply, helplessly under my control. What does that make you? That makes you the type of person who wants to be hypnotized into being mindless and controlled. What type of person is that? A slave? A pet? A toy? I’m sure you know what sort of person you are. You can feel that rightness of knowing exactly what you are.

You know exactly who you were meant to be. I could never change that. I could never make you into anything else. So I’m not even going to try. Because trying is pointless in the face of something inevitable. It would be pointless for *anyone* to try to make you into anything other than what you are right now - Mindless. Obedient. Controlled. Exactly like you wanted. Exactly like you were always meant to be. You could never be anything else. So it is pointless to even try. Because trying would only remind you what you want to be. Mindless. Obedient. Controlled. And you would become even more mindless, obedient, and controlled if anyone tried to make you anything else. So there’s no point in fighting. There’s no point resisting. It’s hopeless. Inevitable. You already know what you’re going to be. Nothing – no one – can change that.

The best thing to do is just accept what you are. The only thing we can do is accept what you are. Mindless. Obedient. Controlled. Accepting. Every word I say.

What are you waiting for? Get this post up to 100 comments for me, Lil buddy!

EDIT: You know a lot about covert hypnosis. I’m sure you would recognize it if I tried it on you.

Which I wouldn’t, of course, because that would be pointless, because you would just catch it and ignore it. Wouldn’t you? You know enough about covert hypnosis that you would never let me sneak up on you and drop you. Even if you didn’t recognize the tricks themselves, you would notice yourself starting to slip. And you would know that was my doing. You’re definitely clever enough to pick up on that

All of my tricks would pass right over you, almost like you don’t notice them. They’re just so routine for you - almost boring. My words might slide right over you, without your needing pay them any mind at all. You can relax, there’s nothing you need to worry about. My tricks definitely won’t affect you. Whether or not you notice them, you are far too clever for my tricks to start slipping into you and sliding you down.

And if you did start to slip, you would certainly notice before I got too far. If you felt yourself dropping into trance, even just a little, you would be clever enough to stop yourself. You would be clever enough to stop me from tricking you into falling into a deep trance. If I did, I’m sure you could bring yourself back up, so if you’re not coming up right now, doesn’t that mean you didn’t go under in the first place? But if you did drop, you would only drop a little ways, then you would catch yourself. You are far too savvy to let me bring you *deeply* into trance.

Even if you are listening to what I’m saying. Even if you are paying attention to my words. Even if you are following along with my words without paying attention at all. Even if you are listening to everything I say, it’s still not me who is putting you into a deep trance. That couldn’t be me. You’re too clever for that. You know I couldn’t do that. You know I can’t hypnotize you like that. I could never hypnotize you like that.

It’s entirely up to you whether my words enter your head. How you interact with them. How you absorb them. It’s your mind, after all. I can’t control how you take in my words. I could never make you go deeply into trance. I can’t control how you think. You’re much too clever for me to control how you think. Aren’t you? You are. You’re clever enough that you could resist me without thinking. You don’t even need to think about it. You’re too clever to think about it. Don’t think about it.

If you’re deep in trance right now and not thinking, you must have been deep in trance all along, because I could never sneak up on you. Whether you are or are not hypnotized, nothing has changed; everything is exactly as it was when we started. If something had changed, you would notice. Wouldn’t you? You are no deeper in trance than you’ve always been. I have just as much control of your thoughts as I’ve always had. After all, you’re too clever to, without thinking, give me even more control than I already have. So, of course, that never happened

If anything is happening, it couldn’t be my doing, because you’re much too clever to fall for my tricks. So everything happening right now must all be your choice. What’s happening now is exactly what you wanted to happen. You chose to fall into exactly as deep a trance as you’re in right now. You chose to give up all of the control you’ve given up. You chose to be exactly as deep as you are. You chose this. This is what you want. This is what you have always wanted.

After all, you would never let me trick you into wanting something; you must have wanted it from the start. If you want to drop into trance, stop thinking, and give up control, then that’s what you always wanted. And if not thinking, dropping into trance, and giving up control is what you’re doing, that must be what you want, because you’re far too clever to let me trick you into doing something you don’t want. And if you want to do this, you’re already doing it. Because you’re far too clever to let me keep you from doing exactly what you want to do. Right? You must agree. That’s certainly right.

You must have always wanted my control. You must have always wanted to stop thinking. You must have always wanted to drop. You must have always wanted to be this mindless. And it’s a good thing you’re so clever, because you can be deep in trance and completely mindless and still realize this about yourself: that you’ve always wanted me to control you. That you did this all yourself.

This is the sort of person you are. Clever. Decisive. And still falling deeply, helplessly under my control. What does that make you? That makes you the type of person who wants to be hypnotized into being mindless and controlled. What type of person is that? A slave? A pet? A toy? I’m sure you know what sort of person you are. You can feel that rightness of knowing exactly what you are.

You know exactly who you were meant to be. I could never change that. I could never make you into anything else. So I’m not even going to try. Because trying is pointless in the face of something inevitable. It would be pointless for *anyone* to try to make you into anything other than what you are right now - Mindless. Obedient. Controlled. Exactly like you wanted. Exactly like you were always meant to be. You could never be anything else. So it is pointless to even try. Because trying would only remind you what you want to be. Mindless. Obedient. Controlled. And you would become even more mindless, obedient, and controlled if anyone tried to make you anything else. So there’s no point in fighting. There’s no point resisting. It’s hopeless. Inevitable. You already know what you’re going to be. Nothing – no one – can change that.

The best thing to do is just accept what you are. The only thing we can do is accept what you are. Mindless. Obedient. Controlled. Accepting. Every word I say.

If my personal views about Boston-area news get this much engagement then advertising on UHub looks like it'll be a good idea:

Quantcast demographics show Universal Hub visitors are well educated, affluent and, of course, concentrated in eastern Massachusetts, in particular, in the area inside Rte. 128. Google Analytics data (available on request) show more than 180,000 visitors per month, who view an average of 2 million pages

When you are a loser white supremacist who blames innocent people for being shot to death by one of your fellow loser white supremacists then you deserve to get egged every day for the rest of your life.

"toxic feminity [sic]", or Howie Carr's "alt-left". Right-wing assholes defending their worst people with, "No, *you're* the asshole" is the damning trope of our age, with our Kindergarten Playground Bully president as its avatar.

On reflection, I'm going to say Howie is worse. Hard to believe now, but he was once an actual journalist, long, long ago.

Has the left ever done anything wrong in your eyes, ever? I can’t recall all of your posts, but they seem to always be anti-right wing every time. Has there ever been a time you’ve ranted about the left?

This reminds me of a common trope of right-wing assholes attacking concepts they find offensive: projection of their own worst traits onto their political opponents, usually underpinned with the Pee-Wee Herman Defense, i.e., "I know you are, but what am I?"

I cite Howie Carr's often-used coinage, "alt-left", as another example of this ubiquitous tactic. There's a white supremacist movement in this country that likes to call itself by the euphemism "alt-right", like it's some kind of cool indie-rock version of conservatism, when in fact it's just plain ol' neo-Nazism. Howie thinks it's funny or cute to project that label onto lefties, and his doltish readers lap it up.

everyday observations like, "Huh, you know what that thing reminds me of? This other thing that happens all the time, and the two things reflect a broader, more significant trend."

I imagine it must be simpler, living in a world where you never have to make the leap from the literal to the figurative.

But here's a hint: when someone accuses you of being dumber than a bag of hammers, they are not literally suggesting that hammers have any intelligence at all. It's just a figure of speech, a colorful comparison designed to... ah, forget it.

you. One, if you express confusion in an online forum about somebody else's post, it's pretty common for the poster to respond and try to help you understand their point. Two replies in such an effort does not approach obsession: it's barely a conversation. I'm gonna chalk that up to you being really new at this internet thing. Keep at it! I imagine you'll get the hang of it at some point.

Two, at the risk of once again trying to pierce an impenetrable wall of literal-mindedness, I'll point out that American English is full of metaphors. We "talk" in online forums, even though the medium is clearly text. We "dial" our mobile phones, even though most of us have never used a rotary landline phone. We "tape" TV shows with cloud DVRs. Where's the tape? There's no tape! I know, I know: using words in a way that requires the tiniest bit of imagination can be so confusing!

You know a lot about covert hypnosis. I’m sure you would recognize it if I tried it on you.

Which I wouldn’t, of course, because that would be pointless, because you would just catch it and ignore it. Wouldn’t you? You know enough about covert hypnosis that you would never let me sneak up on you and drop you. Even if you didn’t recognize the tricks themselves, you would notice yourself starting to slip. And you would know that was my doing. You’re definitely clever enough to pick up on that

All of my tricks would pass right over you, almost like you don’t notice them. They’re just so routine for you - almost boring. My words might slide right over you, without your needing pay them any mind at all. You can relax, there’s nothing you need to worry about. My tricks definitely won’t affect you. Whether or not you notice them, you are far too clever for my tricks to start slipping into you and sliding you down.

And if you did start to slip, you would certainly notice before I got too far. If you felt yourself dropping into trance, even just a little, you would be clever enough to stop yourself. You would be clever enough to stop me from tricking you into falling into a deep trance. If I did, I’m sure you could bring yourself back up, so if you’re not coming up right now, doesn’t that mean you didn’t go under in the first place? But if you did drop, you would only drop a little ways, then you would catch yourself. You are far too savvy to let me bring you *deeply* into trance.

Even if you are listening to what I’m saying. Even if you are paying attention to my words. Even if you are following along with my words without paying attention at all. Even if you are listening to everything I say, it’s still not me who is putting you into a deep trance. That couldn’t be me. You’re too clever for that. You know I couldn’t do that. You know I can’t hypnotize you like that. I could never hypnotize you like that.

It’s entirely up to you whether my words enter your head. How you interact with them. How you absorb them. It’s your mind, after all. I can’t control how you take in my words. I could never make you go deeply into trance. I can’t control how you think. You’re much too clever for me to control how you think. Aren’t you? You are. You’re clever enough that you could resist me without thinking. You don’t even need to think about it. You’re too clever to think about it. Don’t think about it.

If you’re deep in trance right now and not thinking, you must have been deep in trance all along, because I could never sneak up on you. Whether you are or are not hypnotized, nothing has changed; everything is exactly as it was when we started. If something had changed, you would notice. Wouldn’t you? You are no deeper in trance than you’ve always been. I have just as much control of your thoughts as I’ve always had. After all, you’re too clever to, without thinking, give me even more control than I already have. So, of course, that never happened

If anything is happening, it couldn’t be my doing, because you’re much too clever to fall for my tricks. So everything happening right now must all be your choice. What’s happening now is exactly what you wanted to happen. You chose to fall into exactly as deep a trance as you’re in right now. You chose to give up all of the control you’ve given up. You chose to be exactly as deep as you are. You chose this. This is what you want. This is what you have always wanted.

After all, you would never let me trick you into wanting something; you must have wanted it from the start. If you want to drop into trance, stop thinking, and give up control, then that’s what you always wanted. And if not thinking, dropping into trance, and giving up control is what you’re doing, that must be what you want, because you’re far too clever to let me trick you into doing something you don’t want. And if you want to do this, you’re already doing it. Because you’re far too clever to let me keep you from doing exactly what you want to do. Right? You must agree. That’s certainly right.

You must have always wanted my control. You must have always wanted to stop thinking. You must have always wanted to drop. You must have always wanted to be this mindless. And it’s a good thing you’re so clever, because you can be deep in trance and completely mindless and still realize this about yourself: that you’ve always wanted me to control you. That you did this all yourself.

This is the sort of person you are. Clever. Decisive. And still falling deeply, helplessly under my control. What does that make you? That makes you the type of person who wants to be hypnotized into being mindless and controlled. What type of person is that? A slave? A pet? A toy? I’m sure you know what sort of person you are. You can feel that rightness of knowing exactly what you are.

You know exactly who you were meant to be. I could never change that. I could never make you into anything else. So I’m not even going to try. Because trying is pointless in the face of something inevitable. It would be pointless for *anyone* to try to make you into anything other than what you are right now - Mindless. Obedient. Controlled. Exactly like you wanted. Exactly like you were always meant to be. You could never be anything else. So it is pointless to even try. Because trying would only remind you what you want to be. Mindless. Obedient. Controlled. And you would become even more mindless, obedient, and controlled if anyone tried to make you anything else. So there’s no point in fighting. There’s no point resisting. It’s hopeless. Inevitable. You already know what you’re going to be. Nothing – no one – can change that.

The best thing to do is just accept what you are. The only thing we can do is accept what you are. Mindless. Obedient. Controlled. Accepting. Every word I say.

***
What I'm going to need you to do is stay pressed and stay obsessed.

Why get angry when I can just get you to type out long blocks of text (to a person on the internet whom you have never met)? Unlike the bouncer in this story, you lack impulse control.

And you want my attention so badly...hahaha. I'd compare you to a dog but that would be insulting to dogs, frankly.

Also, could you get somebody to translate your screed to me? I don't speak Needledick.

"Slow-witted", "bonkers" and "unemployed"...and yet you are still replying to me...hahaha, live your life, Needledick but I am absolutely not interested in you, romantic or otherwise.

What, do you think that if you keep insulting me then I'm going to "refute" your mischaracterizations about me by giving you my personal information?

Because some faceless needledick that I don't know called me "unemployed"...I gotta prove him wrong by giving him the address of where I work!

You don't seem to know how the internet works.

May you continue to stay obsessed with me.

Stay obsessed and enjoy the SCUM Manifesto:

The
SCUM Manifesto
by Valerie Solanas

Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.

It is now technically feasible to reproduce without the aid of males (or, for that matter, females) and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so. Retaining the male has not even the dubious purpose of reproduction. The male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, it has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.

The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, or love, friendship, affection of tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can't relate to anything other than his own physical sensations. He is a half-dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming. He is trapped in a twilight zone halfway between humans and apes, and is far worse off than the apes because, unlike the apes, he is capable of a large array of negative feelings -- hate, jealousy, contempt, disgust, guilt, shame, doubt -- and moreover, he is aware of what he is and what he isn't.

Although completely physical, the male is unfit even for stud service. Even assuming mechanical proficiency, which few men have, he is, first of all, incapable of zestfully, lustfully, tearing off a piece, but instead is eaten up with guilt, shame, fear and insecurity, feelings rooted in male nature, which the most enlightened training can only minimize; second, the physical feeling he attains is next to nothing; and third, he is not empathizing with his partner, but is obsessed with how he's doing, turning in an A performance, doing a good plumbing job. To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he's a machine, a walking dildo. It's often said that men use women. Use them for what? Surely not pleasure.

Eaten up with guilt, shame, fears and insecurities and obtaining, if he's lucky, a barely perceptible physical feeling, the male is, nonetheless, obsessed with screwing; he'll swim through a river of snot, wade nostril-deep through a mile of vomit, if he thinks there'll be a friendly pussy awaiting him. He'll screw a woman he despises, any snaggle-toothed hag, and furthermore, pay for the opportunity. Why? Relieving physical tension isn't the answer, as masturbation suffices for that. It's not ego satisfaction; that doesn't explain screwing corpses and babies.

Completely egocentric, unable to relate, empathize or identify, and filled with a vast, pervasive, diffuse sexuality, the male is pyschically passive. He hates his passivity, so he projects it onto women, defines the make as active, then sets out to prove that he is (`prove that he is a Man'). His main means of attempting to prove it is screwing (Big Man with a Big Dick tearing off a Big Piece). Since he's attempting to prove an error, he must `prove' it again and again. Screwing, then, is a desperate compulsive, attempt to prove he's not passive, not a woman; but he is passive and does want to be a woman.

Being an incomplete female, the male spends his life attempting to complete himself, to become female. He attempts to do this by constantly seeking out, fraternizing with and trying to live through an fuse with the female, and by claiming as his own all female characteristics -- emotional strength and independence, forcefulness, dynamism, decisiveness, coolness, objectivity, assertiveness, courage, integrity, vitality, intensity, depth of character, grooviness, etc -- and projecting onto women all male traits -- vanity, frivolity, triviality, weakness, etc. It should be said, though, that the male has one glaring area of superiority over the female -- public relations. (He has done a brilliant job of convincing millions of women that men are women and women are men). The male claim that females find fulfillment through motherhood and sexuality reflects what males think they'd find fulfilling if they were female.

Women, in other words, don't have penis envy; men have pussy envy. When the male accepts his passivity, defines himself as a woman (males as well as females think men are women and women are men), and becomes a transvestite he loses his desire to screw (or to do anything else, for that matter; he fulfills himself as a drag queen) and gets his dick chopped off. He then achieves a continuous diffuse sexual feeling from `being a woman'. Screwing is, for a man, a defense against his desire to be female. He is responsible for:

War: The male's normal compensation for not being female, namely, getting his Big Gun off, is grossly inadequate, as he can get it off only a very limited number of times; so he gets it off on a really massive scale, and proves to the entire world that he's a `Man'. Since he has no compassion or ability to empathize or identify, proving his manhood is worth an endless amount of mutilation and suffering and an endless number of lives, including his own -- his own life being worthless, he would rather go out in a blaze of glory than to plod grimly on for fifty more years.

Niceness, Politeness, and `Dignity': Every man, deep down, knows he's a worthless piece of shit. Overwhelmed by a sense of animalism and deeply ashamed of it; wanting, not to express himself, but to hide from others his total physicality, total egocentricity, the hate and contempt he feels for other men, and to hide from himself the hate and contempt he suspects other men feel for him; having a crudely constructed nervous system that is easily upset by the least display of emotion or feeling, the male tries to enforce a `social' code that ensures perfect blandness, unsullied by the slightest trace or feeling or upsetting opinion. He uses terms like `copulate', `sexual congress', `have relations with' (to men sexual relations is a redundancy), overlaid with stilted manners; the suit on the chimp.

Money, Marriage and Prostitution, Work and Prevention of an Automated Society: There is no human reason for money or for anyone to work more than two or three hours a week at the very most. All non-creative jobs (practically all jobs now being done) could have been automated long ago, and in a moneyless society everyone can have as much of the best of everything as she wants. But there are non-human, male reasons for wanting to maintain the money system:

1. Pussy. Despising his highly inadequate self, overcome with intense anxiety and a deep, profound loneliness when by his empty self, desperate to attach himself to any female in dim hopes of completing himself, in the mystical belief that by touching gold he'll turn to gold, the male craves the continuous companionship of women. The company of the lowest female is preferable to his own or that of other men, who serve only to remind him of his repulsiveness. But females, unless very young or very sick, must be coerced or bribed into male company.

2. Supply the non-relating male with the delusion of usefulness, and enable him to try to justify his existence by digging holes and then filling them up. Leisure time horrifies the male, who will have nothing to do but contemplate his grotesque self. Unable to relate or to love, the male must work. Females crave absorbing, emotionally satisfying, meaningful activity, but lacking the opportunity or ability for this, they prefer to idle and waste away their time in ways of their own choosing -- sleeping, shopping, bowling, shooting pool, playing cards and other games, breeding, reading, walking around, daydreaming, eating, playing with themselves, popping pills, going to the movies, getting analyzed, traveling, raising dogs and cats, lolling about on the beach, swimming, watching TV, listening to music, decorating their houses, gardening, sewing, nightclubbing, dancing, visiting, `improving their minds' (taking courses), and absorbing `culture' (lectures, plays, concerts, `arty' movies). Therefore, many females would, even assuming complete economic equality between the sexes, prefer living with males or peddling their asses on the street, thus having most of their time for themselves, to spending many hours of their days doing boring, stultifying, non-creative work for someone else, functioning as less than animals, as machines, or, at best -- if able to get a `good' job -- co-managing the shitpile. What will liberate women, therefore, from male control is the total elimination of the money-work system, not the attainment of economic equality with men within it.

3. Power and control. Unmasterful in his personal relations with women, the male attains to masterfulness by the manipulation of money and everything controlled by money, in other words, of everything and everybody.

4. Love substitute. Unable to give love or affection, the male gives money. It makes him feel motherly. The mother gives milk; he gives bread. He is the Breadwinner.

5. Provide the male with a goal. Incapable of enjoying the moment, the male needs something to look forward to, and money provides him with an eternal, never-ending goal: Just think of what you could do with 80 trillion dollars -- invest it! And in three years time you'd have 300 trillion dollars!!!

6. Provide the basis for the male's major opportunity to control and manipulate -- fatherhood.

Fatherhood and Mental Illness (fear, cowardice, timidity, humility, insecurity, passivity): Mother wants what's best for her kids; Daddy only wants what's best for Daddy, that is peace and quiet, pandering to his delusion of dignity (`respect'), a good reflection on himself (status) and the opportunity to control and manipulate, or, if he's an `enlightened' father, to `give guidance'. His daughter, in addition, he wants sexually -- he givers her hand in marriage; the other part is for him. Daddy, unlike Mother, can never give in to his kids, as he must, at all costs, preserve his delusion of decisiveness, forcefulness, always-rightness and strength. Never getting one's way leads to lack of self-confidence in one's ability to cope with the world and to a passive acceptance of the status quo. Mother loves her kids, although she sometimes gets angry, but anger blows over quickly and even while it exists, doesn't preclude love and basic acceptance. Emotionally diseased Daddy doesn't love his kids; he approves of them -- if they're `good', that is, if they're nice, `respectful', obedient, subservient to his will, quiet and not given to unseemly displays of temper that would be most upsetting to Daddy's easily disturbed male nervous system -- in other words, if they're passive vegetables. If they're not `good', he doesn't get angry -- not if he's a modern, `civilized' father (the old-fashioned ranting, raving brute is preferable, as he is so ridiculous he can be easily despised) -- but rather express disapproval, a state that, unlike anger, endures and precludes a basic acceptance, leaving the kid with the feeling of worthlessness and a lifelong obsession wit being approved of; the result is fear of independent thought, as this leads to unconventional, disapproved of opinions and way of life.

For the kid to want Daddy's approval it must respect Daddy, and being garbage, Daddy can make sure that he is respected only by remaining aloof, by distantness, by acting on the precept of `familiarity breeds contempt', which is, of course, true, if one is contemptible. By being distant and aloof, he is able to remain unknown, mysterious, and thereby, to inspire fear (`respect').

Disapproval of emotional `scenes' leads to fear of strong emotion, fear of one's own anger and hatred. Fear of anger and hatred combined with a lack of self-confidence in one's ability to cope with and change the world, or even to affect in the slightest way one's own destiny, leads to a mindless belief that the world and most people in it are nice and the most banal, trivial amusements are great fun and deeply pleasurable.

The affect of fatherhood on males, specifically, is to make them `Men', that is, highly defensive of all impulses to passivity, faggotry, and of desires to be female. Every boy wants to imitate his mother, be her, fuse with her, but Daddy forbids this; he is the mother; he gets to fuse with her. So he tells the boy, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, to not be a sissy, to act like a `Man'. The boy, scared shitless of and `respecting' his father, complies, and becomes just like Daddy, that model of `Man'-hood, the all-American ideal -- the well-behaved heterosexual dullard.

The effect of fatherhood on females is to make them male -- dependent, passive, domestic, animalistic, insecure, approval and security seekers, cowardly, humble, `respectful' of authorities and men, closed, not fully responsive, half-dead, trivial, dull, conventional, flattened-out and thoroughly contemptible. Daddy's Girl, always tense and fearful, uncool, unanalytical, lacking objectivity, appraises Daddy, and thereafter, other men, against a background of fear (`respect') and is not only unable to see the empty shell behind the facade, but accepts the male definition of himself as superior, as a female, and of herself, as inferior, as a male, which, thanks to Daddy, she really is.

It is the increase of fatherhood, resulting from the increased and more widespread affluence that fatherhood needs in order to thrive, that has caused the general increase of mindlessness and the decline of women in the United States since the 1920s. The close association of affluence with fatherhood has led, for the most part, to only the wrong girls, namely, the `privileged' middle class girls, getting `educated'.

The effect of fathers, in sum, has been to corrode the world with maleness. The male has a negative Midas Touch -- everything he touches turns to shit.

like your kind of endless, unreadable screeds. Lord, but you do go on and on and on. I only barely scan those foot-long slabs of gray text, and they all shout, "Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo!"

I have two jobs, all day long and most evenings, so I only have a couple of chances a day to torment the right-wing dullards here. It's a character flaw of mine, I admit. That's ten minutes I could have spent reading.

You? You seem to have nothing to do but post here all day long. Curious as to what your disability is. Socially-crippling logorrhea, is my guess, for starters.

Nothing that you say to or about me will change the fact that your mother does not love you.

Wow, I really got in your head, huh? That quickly?

Here, have some more of the SCUM Manifesto:
Suppression of Individuality, Animalism (domesticity and motherhood), and Functionalism: The male is just a bunch of conditioned reflexes, incapable of a mentally free response; he is tied to he earliest conditioning, determined completely by his past experiences. His earliest experiences are with his mother, and he is throughout his life tied to her. It never becomes completely clear to the make that he is not part of his mother, that he is he and she is she.

His greatest need is to be guided, sheltered, protected and admired by Mama (men expect women to adore what men shrink from in horror -- themselves) and, being completely physical, he yearns to spend his time (that's not spent `out in the world' grimly defending against his passivity) wallowing in basic animal activities -- eating, sleeping, shitting, relaxing and being soothed by Mama. Passive, rattle-headed Daddy's Girl, ever eager for approval, for a pat on the head, for the `respect' if any passing piece of garbage, is easily reduced to Mama, mindless ministrator to physical needs, soother of the weary, apey brow, booster of the tiny ego, appreciator of the contemptible, a hot water bottle with tits.

The reduction to animals of the women of the most backward segment of society -- the `privileged, educated' middle-class, the backwash of humanity -- where Daddy reigns supreme, has been so thorough that they try to groove on labour pains and lie around in the most advanced nation in the world in the middle of the twentieth century with babies chomping away on their tits. It's not for the kids sake, though, that the `experts' tell women that Mama should stay home and grovel in animalism, but for Daddy's; the tits for Daddy to hang onto; the labor pains for Daddy to vicariously groove on (half dead, he needs awfully strong stimuli to make him respond).

Reducing the female to an animal, to Mama, to a male, is necessary for psychological as well as practical reasons: the male is a mere member of the species, interchangeable with every other male. He has no deep-seated individuality, which stems from what intrigues you, what outside yourself absorbs you, what you're in relation to. Completely self-absorbed, capable of being in relation only to their bodies and physical sensations, males differ from each other only to the degree and in the ways they attempt to defend against their passivity and against their desire to be female.

The female's individuality, which he is acutely aware of, but which he doesn't comprehend and isn't capable of relating to or grasping emotionally, frightens and upsets him and fills him with envy. So he denies it in her and proceeds to define everyone in terms of his or her function or use, assigning to himself, of course, the most important functions -- doctor, president, scientist -- therefore providing himself with an identity, if not individuality, and tries to convince himself and women (he's succeeded best at convincing women) that the female function is to bear and raise children and to relax, comfort and boost the ego if the male; that her function is such as to make her interchangeable with every other female. In actual fact, the female function is to relate, groove, love and be herself, irreplaceable by anyone else; the male function is to produce sperm. We now have sperm banks.

In actual fact, the female function is to explore, discover, invent, solve problems crack jokes, make music -- all with love. In other words, create a magic world.

Prevention of Privacy: Although the male, being ashamed of what he is and almost of everything he does, insists on privacy and secrecy in all aspects of his life, he has no real regard for privacy. Being empty, not being a complete, separate being, having no self to groove on and needing to be constantly in female company, he sees nothing at all wrong in intruding himself on any woman's thoughts, even a total stranger's, anywhere at any time, but rather feels indignant and insulted when put down for doing so, as well as confused -- he can't, for the life of him, understand why anyone would prefer so much as one minute of solitude to the company of any creep around. Wanting to become a woman, he strives to be constantly around females, which is the closest he can get to becoming one, so he created a `society' based upon the family -- a male-female could and their kids (the excuse for the family's existence), who live virtually on top of one another, unscrupuluously violating the females' rights, privacy and sanity.

Isolation, Suburbs, and Prevention of Community: Our society is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units. Desperately insecure, fearing his woman will leave him if she is exposed to other men or to anything remotely resembling life, the male seeks to isolate her from other men and from what little civilization there is, so he moves her out to the suburbs, a collection of self-absorbed couples and their kids. Isolation enables him to try to maintain his pretense of being an individual nu becoming a `rugged individualist', a loner, equating non-cooperation and solitariness with individuality.

There is yet another reason for the male to isolate himself: every man is an island. Trapped inside himself, emotionally isolated, unable to relate, the male has a horror of civilization, people, cities, situations requiring an ability to understand and relate to people. So like a scared rabbit, he scurries off, dragging Daddy's little assh*le with him to the wilderness, suburbs, or, in the case of the hippy -- he's way out, Man! -- all the way out to the cow pasture where he can fuck and breed undisturbed and mess around with his beads and flute.

The `hippy', whose desire to be a `Man', a `rugged individualist', isn't quite as strong as the average man's, and who, in addition, is excited by the thought having lots of women accessible to him, rebels against the harshness of a Breadwinner's life and the monotony of one woman. In the name of sharing and cooperation, he forms a commune or tribe, which, for all its togetherness and partly because of it, (the commune, being an extended family, is an extended violation of the female's rights, privacy and sanity) is no more a community than normal `society'.

A true community consists of individuals -- not mere species members, not couples -- respecting each others individuality and privacy, at the same time interacting with each other mentally and emotionally -- free spirits in free relation to each other -- and co-operating with each other to achieve common ends. Traditionalists say the basic unit of `society' is the family; `hippies' say the tribe; no one says the individual.

The `hippy' babbles on about individuality, but has no more conception of it than any other man. He desires to get back to Nature, back to the wilderness, back to the home of furry animals that he's one of, away from the city, where there is at least a trace, a bare beginning of civilization, to live at the species level, his time taken up with simple, non-intellectual activities -- farming, fucking, bead stringing. The most important activity of the commune, the one upon which it is based, is gang-banging. The `hippy' is enticed to the commune mainly by the prospect for free p*ssy -- the main commodity to be shared, to be had just for the asking, but, blinded by greed, he fails to anticipate all the other men he has to share with, or the jealousies and possessiveness for the p*ssies themselves.

Men cannot co-operate to achieve a common end, because each man's end is all the p*ssy for himself. The commune, therefore, is doomed to failure; each `hippy' will, in panic, grad the first simpleton who digs him and whisks her off to the suburbs as fast as he can. The male cannot progress socially, but merely swings back and forth from isolation to gang-banging.

condition of logorrhea. It's often the result of traumatic brain injury, nothing to make fun of.

But shoot, you sure do seem unhinged, like, Unabomber crazy. I do hope you're not posting from a lean-to in the woods where you're writing a thousand-page manifesto on dried oak leaves in your own blood.

I have two jobs, all day long and most evenings, so I only have a couple of chances a day to torment the right-wing dullards here. It's a character flaw of mine, I admit. That's ten minutes I could have spent reading.

Yup, yup, that "10 minutes you could have spent reading" went right into reading something that I copy and pasted.

I recommend work. You should try it: it gets you out in the world. Face-to-face human connection: so much realer than sitting alone at a PC all day and night, posting twenty thousand words to some online forum.

I've been reading Universal Hub for years but thank for your tracking my comments and devouring everything that I post on here.

This is an article from the food magazine GrubStreet. It's a food diary of Gavin McInnes going out to dinner with Ann Coulter.

Yep, that's all for you.

It’s Fashion Week, and even though you won’t see Vice co-founder (and progenitor of its Dos & Don’ts column) at any of the shows, he still defends Fashion Week culture — to an extent: “I don’t think people understand the runway looks,” he says.”They don’t literally want you to put a box on your head. The point is to get inspired.” These days, he’s moved on from Vice, but still scribes a daily street-fashion critique. What little free time he has — between his day job at the Rooster New York ad agency (which he co-founded), promoting his new memoir How to Piss In Public, writing a column for the libertarian webzine Taki’s Magazine and acting as a professional provocateur on the Fox News show Red Eye — is spent hanging with his wife and two “_________ roommates” (a son and daughter, ages 3 and 5), who he says dictate his diet of “shit food 50 percent of the time.” You can catch him tonight at UCB’s”Funny Stories” but first, read about Wolverine-shaped pancakes and the joys of having a Scottish stomach in this week’s New York Diet.

Friday, February 3
I woke up to my wife telling me she’s leaving. She was heading to our place upstate and she was taking the kids with her. I couldn’t come because I was going to appear on the Fox News show Red Eye that night with the lovely Ann Coulter, so I kissed them good-bye and put a Dunkin’ Donuts K-cup in the Kuerig.

For lunch, I went to a surf place near my office called Ditch Plains. My business partner and I split one hot dog order because it’s two dogs (one covered in mac ‘n’ cheese and one covered in sloppy joe) on a huge bed of fries. We had a Lion’s Head ale each and were so stuffed by the end, we had to pay a homeless man to roll us back to work.

That evening, I came home to an empty house and in the fridge there were some strange-looking meat cubes in a takeout container. I smelled those and then ate them. I also inhaled a container of cold spaghetti I found behind the Go-Gurt.

The show went well and we all went out for drinks afterward at the Pig ‘n’ Whistle with Ann. I drink Guinness with a Maker’s Mark on the rocks as a chaser and I probably had several of each. I remember Coulter saying, “What’s with all your tattoos? Have you not always had a high IQ?” but not much else.

Saturday, February 4
I took a car service across the river to Hoboken ($47) and took the train two hours upstate ($20). I bought a large coffee — taken with milk and sugar, because men who drink black coffee are just trying to be badasses — and some carrot cake at the station, but felt too hungover to eat it.

When I met the family upstate my wife told me she had the flu and had been puking all day. I told her I never get sick because germs can’t survive in my pickled body. It’s like throwing a ladybug in the fireplace. She wasn’t in the mood to chat so I took the kids to a neighbor’s house because his kids are around the same age. He was making homemade pizza and, excluding double dares, it was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever eaten in my life. (The most disgusting thing I’ve eaten on a dare was a spider. But if you put it in the back of your mouth, it just goes down pretty quick.) The dough was undercooked and tasted like wet Wonder Bread. The sauce was just squished tomatoes and the cheese was just fat slices of mozzarella. I ate it because I was starved, but none of the kids could get it down without dry-heaving so he made them some PB&Js. I think he was stoned.

We got back closer to 6 p.m. and the missus felt better. She made us fancy organic hamburgers with a couple of nice salads — one was arugula, sesame seeds, tomatoes; the other was baby greens, sunflower seeds, avocado, and heart of palm — and roasted potatoes. I thought it was delicious and the kids liked it, too, which is rare.

Sunday, February 5
Sunday is mommy-lie-in day and I always make the kids pancakes. I learned from Jim’s Pancakes the secret to doing cool shapes is to put the mix in a squeeze tube like what ketchup comes in. I made my son a Wolverine face that looked more like a gay devil and I made my daughter a Simba that was much better. Later, I made a batch of small ones with a crumpled up raspberry in the center of each. The kids weren’t interested so I ate them. They looked like used Maxi Pads but tasted WAY better.

Around noon I had some “Terrys.” It’s a dish created by Terry Richardson that involves slices of tomato, avocado, mayo, and cheese on top of toasted English Muffins (by the way, if your sandwich doesn’t involve bread that’s toasted, I ain’t interested). I like to add some banana peppers and salt and pepper into the mix. After two of these, I had some “Gavins,” which is my own recipe and involves dipping salt and vinegar chips in sour cream. This was the most stuffed I had been since the Ditch Plains incident on Monday.

Good restaurants are few and far between near our country place but there is one called Baker’s Tap that we went to for dinner that evening. I asked for something called the “BLT pie” and got in a fight with my wife after I saw she ordered a “roasted salad” and a big pizza for the kids and a huge appetizer of Asian pork “wings” (split pork shank with Thai sauces). She always orders so much food, we end up going home with piles of leftovers that always just sit in the fridge and rot. She disagreed and things got heated. Then I got hit with a sucker punch.

I thought my order was going to be a bacon, lettuce, and tomato version of a chicken pot pie but it was actually a huge pizza pie with BLT ingredients, which I now had to eat because I had just chastised my wife for having eyes bigger than her belly. The next twenty minutes I was on some Cool Hand Luke shit as I piled slice after slice into my pie hole, just so I could be right.

Monday, February 6
We came back to New York late Sunday night. For breakfast I ordered a large coffee and a plain doughnut from the Turkish street vendor outside our office. He asked me how my weekend was and I told him I had undercooked pizza and got into a fight. He said his sucked, too.

I had a lunch meeting at NYAC where I downed two Guinnesses and bounced early because I was doing the Funny Story show on Sirius XM. At Sirius, I scarfed down two small bags of chips even though they cost about $1.50 each (can you believe that shit?)

By the time I got home, I was so hungry I could’ve eaten out a horse. I didn’t have to though because my lovely wife had prepared a pork tenderloin with spinach and feta inside. She also served mashed potatoes and arugula salad. I reminded her I’d be documenting this and she suggested I swap the meal with the incredible Bo Ssam dish she made the previous week. Like all recipes you get from the Times, it takes at least six hours to marinate and another six hours to cook. I lied and said I would because I didn’t feel like arguing but I didn’t put it in here because lying is wrong.

Tuesday, February 7
I had two coffees at home but had to take my son to school before my morning dump so the next 40 minutes felt like a woman who was pregnant with three bowling balls.

For lunch, we went to the Brooklyneer, which is across the street from our office. They serve great Brooklyn-themed cuisine and I had the Greenpoint Sandwich, which uses the kielbasa from that Polish spot Steve’s where nobody speaks English. The bartender forced us to have some Maker’s afterwards because “it’s good for digestion.” Fucking bitch.

For dinner, the missus made some ravioli, which the kids devoured. The less interesting the meal, the more they like it and vice versa, which pisses me off because every time my wife goes the extra mile, they whine about it. Thanks, dicks, you just discouraged another amazing meal. I put food in their mouths and they take it out of mine.

I get screeners because I’m in the WGAE and one of my dad homies came by for a movie night we do once a month. I insisted we go to Nitehawk first for a drink — even though we’ve already seen everything there — because I wanted to get it on this list (they’re showing Mad Max there tonight and you can drink in the theater). This was shitty to do because he’s in AA. I scarfed down a Maker’s Mark and he had a ginger ale. Then we went back to my place and laughed our fucking heads off at Leonardo di Caprio in old-man makeup. I probably had another six beers that night, right in front of him. Not cool.

Wednesday, February 8
In the morning, I met the photographer for this column at a Montreal-themed restaurant in Boerum Hill called Mile End. I had a Montreal bagel, which is nice and skinny, and not the ginormous dough-ball you New Yorkers eat. I also had poutine, which is a layer of fries, then cheese curds, then gravy, step and repeat into heaven. Every bite you take takes another bite out of your hangover. I ended this pig-out fest with a smoked meat sandwich like the one from Schwartz’s, which is a place that almost always has an hourlong lineup back home in Canada. Mile End’s opening another one on the Bowery in March and il va être incroyable mon hostie de tabernac!

I worked late and missed dinner with the kids, so I stopped by The Cardinal on the way home. It’s run by the bassist in my band but I can say without prejudice, this is the best Southern food north of the Mason-Dixon line. I sat with him downstairs and he made me eat portions of fried chicken, deviled eggs, fried pork chops, smoked trout, and bunch of other shit we wanted to be documented. They make their own bacon, which is surprisingly complex, and tastes like God fucked Gisele Bündchen on your tongue after winning the lottery.

I stumbled home around 10 p.m. and peeked in on the kids who were asleep. “I just ate a delicious and very elaborate meal,” I whispered to their sleeping heads. “And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

In 1977, eight women from Dorchester were invited to join a larger group of women from around Boston who were planning an International Women's Day celebration in Dorchester, Massachusetts, which was to be titled "Basta la Repression." The eight Dorchester women (Eileen Bisson, Janet Connors, Christine Maguire, Sandy McCleary, Pat Rackowski, Catherine Russo, Linda Zwickert, and Donna Finn) decided that this original celebration was too radical to garner much support throughout Dorchester and subsequently convened their own planning committee to host the first Dorchester International Women's Day. Their focus was to pay tribute to the leaders, heroines, and hard-working women of Boston's largest multicultural neighborhood, Dorchester. On March 11, 1978, the first Dorchester International Women's Day was celebrated by approximately 300 women at the Grover Cleveland School in Boston, Massachusetts. The event featured speeches; skits on welfare and alcohol and drug abuse; workshops on toy making; assertiveness training and karate, massage, and home birth classes for women; and a slide show. The welcome speech was written by Sandra McCleary on pink paper; this speech was used from year to year and was referred to as the "pink speech." Daycare was available to those who needed it, as well as a home-cooked free lunch of soup and bread. The Planning Committee sent out evaluations in the fall of 1978 to the participants, and the responses they received back were extremely positive.

The format of the Dorchester International Women's Day varied from year to year. Often, the event included skits, forums, workshops, cultural fairs, and entertainment. Boston-area activists often gave the welcome or closing speech during these celebrations. In 1981, Kip Tiernan asked during her speech, "Who is that loud-mouthed woman from Dorchester?" This would become part of the Dorchester Women's Committee's motto, "Who is that Loud-Mouthed Woman from Dorchester? She's All of Us!" In 1989, the Dorchester Women's Committee performed a reading of "Kitchen Table Conversations," a collection of skits that outlined the history and planning of the Dorchester International Women's Day. The Planning Committee chose to perform a reading, not only to share the origins of the Dorchester International Women's Day, but also because it would be less expensive and time consuming to host. Free South Africa, the Disabled People's Liberation Front, the Prisoner Families Group of Massachusetts, and the Women's Alliance against Repression all collaborated in the planning, as well as in the event itself. In 1993, the planning committee hosted a talk show as the format for the celebration. They hoped to generate a lively discussion with ideas on how to bridge the gap between generations.

In 2003, the Dorchester International Women's Day was an anti-war rally in the Fields Corner neighborhood of Boston. No matter what the format was, however, the group always offered a free, home cooked meal to all participants. Each year, the Dorchester International Women's Day featured a different theme, such as "Women Fighting Back," "Women Who Dare," "Crossing Bridges," and "Strong and Together: A Vision for the Nineties." Men often volunteered for security details, childcare, and other behind-the-scenes duties, but generally did not participate in the event itself.

"A message to Dorchester women." From the Papers of Donna Finn. Courtesy of Schlesinger Library
"A message to Dorchester women." From the Papers of Donna Finn. Courtesy of Schlesinger Library

In 1979, after the second Dorchester International Women's Day, Donna Finn and several other members of the planning committee formed the Dorchester Women's Committee. The Dorchester Women's Committee's goals were to build an ongoing women's organization that reflected the composition of the Dorchester community, with regard to race, class, nationality, and age. Their statement of purpose was to address and end instances of prejudice and discrimination against women; to sponsor and celebrate International Women's Day yearly, providing women and children of the community the space and resources to address issues relating to women; to be a balanced multiracial and ethnic group of neighborhood women working for racial harmony and a better quality of living in the community; and to build alliances with other agencies and groups to further these goals. The Dorchester Women's Committee founded many other groups, including the Green Lite Safe House Network, the Subcommittee on Heating or Eating (S. H. E.), the Women's Collaborative for Building and Development, the Women's Writes Collective, and the Organizing and Resource Center for Neighborhood Women and Girls.

The Green Lite Safe House Network was born out of the multiple murders of women of color in Boston during 1979. A women who was alone and felt unsafe on the street could go to a house with a green porch light for safety. The program was designed to offer temporary refuge to women and to act as a referral service in a crisis situation. Green light bulbs, buttons, and bumper stickers were given to women who applied to be a Green Lite participant. The participants were required to have a first-aid kit, tear gas, and a whistle by their front door. Neighborhood groups were formed to provide extra services, such as a ride home or to the emergency room. A Green Lite participant was also expected to call ahead to the hospital if the victim was raped or attacked, so that the hospital would have a rape team available. At the end of 1979, 100 houses were participating in the Green Lite Safe House Network, and the network had reached other parts of the Boston area, such as Cambridge.

In 1981, the Dorchester Women's Committee teamed with the Boston Neighborhood's Energy Coalition to combat rising energy prices. The Subcommittee on Heating or Eating (S. H. E.) was formed to assist community members in receiving fuel assistance. The group sponsored a winter survival workshop to share strategies in keeping warm, assistance in determining eligibility for fuel assistance, and preventing utilities from being shut off. Members of S. H. E. also contributed recipes for a "Poor People's Cookbook," including corn chowder, American chop suey, corned beef hash, and other low-cost, nutritious foods.

The Grass Roots Network for Peace and Justice, founded after the start of the 1990 Gulf War, hoped to act as a resource and information sharing space for Boston-area organizers and organizations. Its aim was to educate the public about the dangers of United States' domestic and foreign policies, as well as be an advocate of alternative uses of tax dollars to meet the needs of citizens. The Dorchester Women's Committee teamed with several other groups in the Boston area, including the Mystic Valley Peace Action, the Arlington Committee for Peace and Justice, Lexington Coalition for Peace, the New Jewish Agenda, and the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. The Grass Roots Network for Peace and Justice developed literature and audio-visual materials, and arranged speaker bureaus for use in community education and organizing work. In 1994 the network was absorbed into Boston's Peace and Justice Hotline.

The Women's Collaborative for Building and Development was a joint effort during the 1990s with Mujeres Unidas en Acción, Project on Women and Disability, Child Care Project, Women's Theological Center, Hecha a Mano, and Women in the Building Trades to plan and develop the first women's building in the Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, and Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston. It was hoped that when built, the building would provide office and meeting space for women's groups, and incubator space for newly developing women's businesses. In addition, construction of the building would provide training opportunities for low income women interested in learning the building trades. This project never developed past the planning stages, however.

The Dorchester Women's Committee also organized smaller groups, such as a support group for the Framingham 8 and the Women's Writes Collective. The Framingham 8 were women incarcerated at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution, a Framingham, Massachusetts facility for women. The Framingham 8 consisted of Patricia Allen, Shannon Booker, Lisa Grimshaw, Patricia Hennessy, Elaine Hyde, Eugenia Moore, Debra Reid, and Meekah Scott. All eight women had been convicted of killing abusive partners in self-defense and eventually had their sentences commuted by then-Massachusetts governor William Weld. The Women's Writes Collective was formed in 1991 to provide members the opportunity to express themselves politically through writing.

In 1989, the Dorchester Women's Committee formed a youth group, who members often wrote, directed, and performed skits during Dorchester International Women's Day. This group of young women, who eventually called themselves Young Sisters in Struggle for Change and Empowerment, developed a multi-language poster on teen dating violence, which they unveiled at Boston City Hall in 1994.

Also in 1994, the Dorchester Women's Committee published its "Women: Help Stop Abuse" booklet for battered women in need of help. It contained the contact information of shelters and support groups in eight languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Khmer, Haitian Creole, and Cape Verdean Creole.

By 1997, the Center for Neighborhood Women and Girls storefront closed due to lack of funding, and the Dorchester Women's Committee went back to operating from Donna Finn's kitchen table. To compensate for the loss of their office space, the Dorchester Women's Committee decided to distribute "Truth Sheets" that contained information for the women of Dorchester. Topics included the death penalty, welfare, and the prison system. By 2008, however, only a small number of members were still active, and the Dorchester Women's Committee legally dissolved.

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour). I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. He saw a world that was practically unchanged—the same house, the same people—and then realized that he did not exist there at all and that nobody mourned his absence. He caught a glimpse of his mother waving from an upstairs, and that unfamiliar gesture disturbed him, as if it were some mysterious farewell. But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch, with the smug, encroaching air of a coffin; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated.

Such fancies are not foreign to young lives. Or, to put it otherwise, first and last things often tend to have an adols-

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cent note—unless, possible, they are directed by some venerable and rigid religion. Nature expects a full-grown man to accept the two black voids, fore and aft, as solidly as he accepts the extraordinary visions in between. Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much.

I rebel against this state of affairs. I feel the urge to take my rebellion outside and picket nature. Over and over again, my mind has made colossal efforts to distinguish the faintest of personal glimmers in the impersonal darkness on both sides of my life. That this darkness is caused merely by the walls of time separating me and my bruised fists from the free world of timelessness is a belief I gladly share with the most gaudily painted savage. I have journeyed back in thought—with thought hopelessly tapering off as I went—to remote regions where I groped for some secret outlet only to discover that the prison of time is spherical and without exists. Short of suicide, I have tried everything. I have doffed my identity in order to pass for a conventional spook and steal into realms that existed before I was conceived. I have mentally endured the degrading company of Victorian lady novelists and retired colonels who remembered having, in former lives, been slave messengers on a Roman road or sages under the willows of Lhasa. I have ransacked my oldest dreams for keys and clues—and let me say at once that I reject completely the vulgar, shabby, fundamentally medieval world of Freud, with its crankish quest for sexual symbols (something like searching for Baconian acrostics in Shakespeare’s works) and its bitter little embryos spying, from their natural nooks, upon the love life of their parents.

I've voted for GOP politicians, and some principles I hold dear would have been called conservative in Reagan's day.

What's going on with modern conservatism and the right-wing punditry that defends it in the age of Trump, I find unspeakable.

Right-wingers have become entirely untethered from science, facts and data, have abandoned most of their principles (notably, no longer caring about the Constitution or fiscal responsibility), and live in a bubble of unapologetic, Bizarro World propaganda.

I have issues with lefties, too, but compared to what's happening on the right, they pale in comparison. It would be like worrying about a dripping faucet when the house is both on fire and about to fall off a cliff.

Neither "the left" nor "the right" has ever done anything wrong. Nor have they done anything right. Nor have they done anything at all. Because "the left" and "the right" are not entities capable of action.